As discussed in FindLaw's Legally Weird, a teenager in New York recently was saved by a playful message posted on his Facebook page.

Rodney Bradford, 19, wrote that he was craving pancakes on his Facebook status. His Facebook evidence of an alibi prevented him from being charged with robbery.

In another example of "now you can do it through Facebook," a Tennessee woman might face repercussions including jail time for Facebook "poking" someone in violation of a protective order.

Typically, when we hear about protective orders we think about protection from physical violence, like forbidding someone from coming within 100 yards of another person.

Courts, however, can and do include many other forms of protection in protective orders. They routinely forbid contact in all forms, whether it's carrier pigeon, mail, fax, telephone, email, or a Facebook "poke."

A Facebook poke is a quick message you can send another Facebook user, causing them to see an icon on their Facebook page indicating that you've poked them.

Though it seems something that wouldn't need saying, don't "poke" someone who has a protective order against you. And if you get poked by someone you've got a protective order against, take a look at the protective order and contact your attorney, because the order has likely been violated.

Though her attorney declined to give ABC News details about the underlying protective order, Shannon Jackson, 36, was subject of a court order to stay away from another Tennessee woman. The order included prohibition from "telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with [the alleged victim], directly or indirectly."

Matthew and Laura Eaton tearfully confessed their years long shoplifting and eBay selling spree to Dr. Phil and all of us last year. The good doctor queried: "I'm no lawyer or a cop, but isn't that a federal crime?" "Yeah, it is," responded Mrs. Eaton. She was correct. The couple has now been indicted for what federal authorities term "e-fencing."

Though lately we've been seeing many criminals bust themselves via Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, the Eatons reminded us that good old fashioned network TV is not dead.

"In the hall of fame of dumb crooks, these people will have a prominent position." Solemn words from former San Diego District Attorney Paul Pfingst about the Eatons. From one Secret Service agent who worked the case: "In 20 years of fraud cases, I've never seen anything like this: a taped confession before a national audience."

The couple allegedly engaged in what has been dubbed "e-fencing." What is "e-fencing"? Stealing stuff and selling it online. Or taking stuff other people stole and selling it online.

The actual federal charges are the same as pre-internet federal fencing charges: transporting, transmitting, and transferring merchandise worth over $5,000 in interstate commerce when you know the goods to be stolen. The internet simply allows one to do it from home.

A Miami hacker, along with two others "in or near Russia," was indicted for conspiring to steal approximately 130 million credit and debit card numbers. The group's sophisticated attacks targeted Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. along with large retailers including 7-Eleven, the Hannaford Brothers grocery store chain and two unnamed corporate victims.

According to the indictment, 28 year old Albert Gonzalez (aka "soupnazi," "segvec," and "j4guar17") orchestrated a coordinated operation which scouted victim companies and proceeded to hack their way to more than 130 million card numbers. A vast majority of those numbers came from Heartland Payment Systems, a national credit card processing company. According to Wired, the group captured credit card numbers, expiration dates, and in 20% of cases, the cardholder's name.

Gonzalez faces up to 35 years in prison.

According to his indictment, Gonzalez played a primary role in a vast scheme to infiltrate victim companies, steal credit and debit card information, and leave "sniffers" within victim systems so that the group's programs could continue sending credit card info to the hackers. The DOJ described the group's work as highly sophisticated, using malware to prevent detection and disable host systems' anti-virus software.

A New Jersey man has become the first to be criminally charged with theft of an internet domain. He allegedly stole the P2P.com domain, and subsequently sold it, oddly enough, to Los Angeles Clipper Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen.

Domain theft has been going on for a while. Perhaps the most famous case was the theft of the highly valuable sex.com, which was accomplished through some old fashioned forgery and fake letters. As the domain name might connote, the sex.com story is a bit more spicey, including years on the run and an alleged shoot-out between bounty hunters and Mexican police. While the thief was eventually arrested, it was not for theft of the domain.

However, according to Domain Name News, Daniel Goncalves of Union City, New Jersey is the first to be criminally prosecuted for domain name theft.

How did he allegedly do it? By hacking into one of the domain owner's email accounts, finding the login information for the owner's GoDaddy.com account (the domain registrar for P2P.com), and then transferring the domain to his own GoDaddy account (under a false name -- a mash-up of his and his fiancé's names, which likely will not help his defense).

He also allegedly fudged PayPal records to make it appear that the domain was purchased.

Then he simply auctioned it on eBay, with LA Clipper Mark Madsen winning with a bid of $111,000. What did "Mad Dog" Madsen want with it? Ends up that in addition to playing tenacious defense, the Stanford economics grad is a domain investor. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing regarding the domain.

Cousin of M.C. Hammer, and presence on Hammer's reality show Hammertime, Marvin Grant has been accused of raping a woman he met via Twitter. Getting to the bottom of Mr. Grant's case will need investigation and, should he be charged, trial. Discussion of this as the first "Twitter rape case," however, has been immediate.

As we've explored in relation to many "Craigslist crimes" and "Facebook divorces," social media tools have been tied to an ever increasing array of crimes and lawsuits. We've seen alleged murderers finding their victims via Craigslist, and law enforcement portraying Craigslist as an enabler of prostitution, just to name the most discussed examples.

Now enters Twitter, into the case of Marvin Grant, known as "Lyin' Marv" on M.C. Hammer's Hammertime. As the AP reports, a San Francisco Bay Area woman has accused Grant of raping her in a Livermore hotel room.

The Rebeccah Beushausen "Story"

Rebeccah Beushausen was a woman whose sad story about her unborn child engendered great sympathy from a wide Internet audience. But it turns out, the AP now reports, that her story turned out to be an elaborate hoax. The AP summarized the gist of Beushausen's blog-based yarn, as stating she was "an unmarried mother who chose to carry her child who is now terminally ill to term rather than have an abortion because of her deep Christian faith."

Beushausen even shared the medical name of her baby's diagnosis, Trisomy 13 syndrome, which per the story is "a chromosomal defect that can cause severe mental retardation and death." Needless to say, Beushausen garnered much sympathy with the story, to the tune of over 1 million hits to her blog. Well, the jig is up now after she wrote about her "child's" birth and posted some pics up last week. Someone noticed it was a doll, and by now Beushausen has apologized in full (via her blog of course).

The hits just keep on coming against Craigslist it appears. By now, most people have probably heard about the so-called "Craigslist killer", Philip Markoff, who is alleged to have arranged for meetings with individuals advertising on Craigslist while targeting them for robbery. Over the course of just the last week, however, two stories may well have blown that one way out of the proverbial water, at least if depravity is the measure.

First came the story of not-so-loving husband "Travis" of North Carolina who allegedly hired someone on Craigslist to rape his wife while he watched (his name was withheld to protect his wife/victim). Then if that wasn't bad enough, over the weekend CNN reported on Korena Elaine Roberts of Oregon, who police suspect lured pregnant 21-year-old Heather Megan Snively to a horrifying end, apparently in the hopes of stealing her unborn child (the child tragically died, too).

In what appears could be a tragic story of online chatting, turned-to-stalking, turned-to-violence, the AP reported on a 23 year old New York woman who was allegedly killed by a jilted online acquaintance. Although details are a bit sketchy at this point, the case does raise questions about online safety, particularly in the context of online dating sites.

According to police allegations, Raymond Dennis (aka Mike, as he was known online), met 23-year-old Nimzay Aponte online via AOL and Local-Hookupz.com (a dating site). Aponte allegedly refused to meet Dennis after their initial online encounters, but this was not enough to dissuade Dennis. According to the New York Daily News, "Dennis allegedly tracked Aponte to a job fair she was attending" where he found her talking to a group of men and women. He became enraged, stormed off, but came back and fatally stabbed Aponte at the same job fair the next day.

As the now-infamous MySpace suicide case winds to a close, it looks like Congress may at the same time be taking a shot at legislation aimed squarely at cyberbullying. The law introduced last month, entitled the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act after the victim in the MySpace case, would become the tool of choice for prosecutors to pursue cyberbullies. This became pointedly necessary, at least politically and in the court of public opinion, after prosecutors had to strain to find a way to go after Lori Drew in the Megan Meier case, eventually doing so using an anti-hacking law in a novel fashion.

CNN's SciTechBlog yesterday pointed out valid concerns regarding the broad language of the bill, particularly as it pertains to bloggers and those who enjoy partaking in "flame wars" on message boards. Specifically, the law makes it a crime punishable by fine or up to 2 years of prison time to communicate online "with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person." Huh...not confessing to anything here, but that language alone is pretty worrying (as anyone who may be prone to gloat and/or taunt electronically over real or fantasy sports victories might agree).